THE GUARDIAN (UK) Three Blind Mice article

'I made a film that I want people to argue about'

It was inevitable that Australian actor-writer-director Matthew Newton would end up in showbusiness. As the son of Australian television royalty Bert and Patti Newton, Matt is a household name in Australia, but still relatively unknown outside his home country.

That's set to change if he keeps making films of the calibre of Three Blind Mice, which is screening at the London film festival this month.

Three Blind Mice – which won a jury commendation at this year's Sydney film festival, and was shown at Toronto last month – is a fast-paced comedy-drama about three naval officers on shore leave in Sydney, the night before they are due to ship out for Iraq.

It's a clever, well-made film with smart, realistic dialogue that belies the fact that its only Newton's second film as a writer/director. It was independently funded – although Screen Australia paid for the print - and was made with a cast and crew made up of Newton's friends and recent graduates of the Sydney Film School. It was even edited by Newton's girlfriend, Gracie Otto (sister of actor Miranda), who also has a small role in the film.

"It's a gamble, but what you get out of it is a film you're happy with and a film you want to see," he says.

The idea for Three Blind Mice, with three vastly differently personalities out for a night of revelry, was one that Newton had been mulling over for a while.


"I was thinking about having that truncated period of time before you are going to go and do something phenomenal - like fight in a war, a huge life-changing experience - and what you would want to do to fill those last hours, or what you'd HAVE to do," he says.

"So I was thinking about that, but not in terms of a film – just as one of the weird things that I think about. I was doing an acting job at the time, so I put it to the back of my mind. And then one night I went to the computer and wrote it really quickly. It came out in three days, and that was what we shot."

I'm sitting chatting to Newton over a coffee at his London hotel. As he speaks, his passion for film – and for this project in particular – sparkles in his eyes.

He's very critical of a lot of the mass-produced cinema we see today, and was adamant that he wanted to do something different.

"I tried to write it so the dialogue is very natural, and every scene has multiple points of view," he says.

"I didn't want to make a hero-driven film, I wanted to make it multi-narrative in the sense that every character has their point of view and I wanted every character to treat the film like they're the lead. I really wanted everyone to bring their own opinion and personality."

"And I guess I also wanted to show what young men should be doing with their evenings as opposed to going and getting killed or having to kill someone else – making mistakes, getting in trouble, meeting girls, playing cards, trying to figure out what it is to be a man."

For the three main characters, though – Dean (Toby Schmitz), Sam (Ewen Leslie) and Harry (Newton) - it's not a normal night out. They are about to ship out to a war zone, and they are fully aware of where they are going and what could happen to them. Although it's not, strictly speaking, an anti-war film, Newton did intend the spectre of war to hang over proceedings.

"The argument of whether we should or we shouldn't be fighting is irrelevant: we are," he says of the current conflicts in Iraq and elsewhere.

"It's not irrelevant to everyday politics, but I don't want to make a film about that. We are going there, and there are young men and women who are being sent over to fight, and I guess what I wanted to do was to show the human face of that. So that anyone who sees the film strips past the uniform and looks at that face.

"I made a film that I want people to argue about, and have opinions on. It's impossible to make a good film that's trying to please everyone. It's like trying to pick up a person in a nightclub, trying to be everything they want you to be. You know when someone's playing you. I hate people trying to manipulate me and I certainly hate trying to manipulate other people. I didn't want to make a film that tried to manipulate anybody."

Newton is proud to be classified as an independent filmmaker, and critical of a lot of films now that call themselves independent but aren't. His love of film came from sitting and watching classic movies on television with his father, Bert – an Australian television legend comparable to Bruce Forsyth in the UK or Dick Clark in the US.

"I didn't understand a lot of it when I was really young, but by the time I was 10 or 11 I was starting to have my own opinions on it."

"So I went, 'Well, I want to do that, I want to make those films'. And then when I started working [as an actor] I realised that the person who has the most fun and most responsibility is the director – they get to do everything. It was something I always knew I wanted to do."

Coming from a family of performers, Newton says he had no exposure to directing – so in his early days as an actor, while sitting around on film and TV sets, he watched directors to learn the craft. "That was my education. I'd just watch what was going on, and bother people."

Newton has managed to assemble a cast of old and young Australian talent – talent like Pia Miranda (who he worked with on the coming-of-age drama Looking For Alibrandi), Barry Otto, Marcus Graham, Jacki Weaver and Charles Tingwell.

Did his family background have any influence on getting the great cast, or has it helped in his career?

"I'm the wrong person to ask, I don't know why that would. I'm not being coy, I have no understanding of it, I'm the one person who's not part of the conversation – I'm never in the room when those things are being talked about."

And what's next for Newton? He's heading back to Australia to begin work on a new TV series, but film-making is now in his blood.

"I want to keep making films – the best drug for me on set was collaborating with people, and helping them do something they didn't think they could do. It's a very heady feeling. Making films is what I want to do. I've been spoiled, because I've made this film the way that I want to make it."

Gracie Otto is the sister, not the daughter, of Miranda Otto.

17 October 2008 The Guardian (UK)